


Though I Walk Through the Valley

by domesticadventures



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Gen, Pagan Gods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-22
Updated: 2014-11-22
Packaged: 2018-02-26 13:24:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2653553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domesticadventures/pseuds/domesticadventures
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>God of spring Castiel meets god of death Meg.</p>
<p>He makes a challenge of it, what transient beauty he can create for her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Though I Walk Through the Valley

**Author's Note:**

  * For [propinquitous](https://archiveofourown.org/users/propinquitous/gifts).



> This ficlet is based on an AU idea by [maidenpool](http://maidenpool.tumblr.com/) and further inspired by [this art](http://msdoomandgloom.tumblr.com/post/91121363155/) by [msdoomandgloom](http://msdoomandgloom.tumblr.com/) and [this art](http://propinquitous.tumblr.com/post/102071438527/) by [propinquitous](http://propinquitous.tumblr.com/).

They will say he was kidnapped.

He would not laugh if you told him. He would frown, considering your words with the same solemn attention he gives every living thing.

It’s his job, you know. Creating. He loves it, just as he loves everything made or grown, whether born of his will or not. He tends the grass and the trees, blesses farmers’ fields with their crops in neat rows, the small potted plants kept on porches and windowsills. He fashions flowers in broad patches of bright colors, coats valleys and hillsides in swatches of roses and lilies, daffodils and hyacinth, sunflowers and tulips. He plies his craft on every part of the earth the sun touches.

Shadows pass over his domain, sometimes, but none are quite like her.

She stomps into his life, quite literally. She marches across his hillside like she belongs there, bare feet brushing against the newborn orchids, and in her wake she leaves patches of destruction, petals that shrivel and stems that wilt at her touch. Try as he might, he cannot catch her. Damage control instead, then.

He follows in her wake, furious, frantically and haphazardly filling in the spaces she creates. When he finally reaches her, stopped at the edge of the foliage, idle on a patch of bare earth, it is only because she allows him to. His impassivity masks the start of a storm, but her dark eyes are shining, lighting on something beyond him.

He follows her gaze and surveys what he has wrought to replace the blank spaces she left in her path. The entire slope is a hectic mess of color, a wild mix of flowers of all kinds, chaotic and beautiful. It’s the most wondrous thing he’s ever created. He turns back towards her, brow furrowed.

“Hi there,” she says. “Name’s Meg.”

“Castiel,” he says, begrudgingly. “This is not your territory.” He may not be all-powerful, but he’s a god nonetheless. He has a reputation to maintain.

She laughs, high and clear like winter rolling in off the mountains. “The whole world is my territory,” she says, with the kind of conviction that requires no boasting. “Care to join me?”

Kidnapped, they’ll say.

Not so. He goes with her willingly.

\--

“Your job makes mine rather difficult,” he says, weaving flowers into her hair. They wilt within seconds, as if to prove his point, but he continues nonetheless. She never once asks him, _Why bother_? She knows why, anyway, knows exactly what it means that he brings these things into existence, wills them into being with a thought or a feeling, though he knows it’s in her very nature to destroy.

Still, she knows when she’s being antagonized, even affectionately.

“Job?” she scoffs, casting a long-suffering look to the heavens. “More like a cause.”

He smiles, brushing her hair out of her face. “A rather morbid cause to serve, is it not?”

“It’s the greatest cause there is,” she says. “The one that gives life meaning.”

“Strange words, coming from an immortal.”

“Oh, what a farce,” she says, reaching up to touch the petals in her hair with gentle fingers before resting her hand on Castiel’s face. “All things must end, even things they call gods. Maybe I’ll walk on your grave, one day.”

“And maybe I’ll create flowers for yours,” he says, placing another doomed blossom behind her ear.

She laughs, unperturbed. “I would like that.”

\--

He goes with her to collect the dying.

They find them in every place imaginable, sometimes in beds and sometimes on battlefields, on roads and in ditches and beside rivers, lying in cribs and leaning in chairs. She collects their souls with care, leaving the bodies behind to return to the earth. To _his_ earth.

He brings forth new life from what they once were, creates gardens on graves, leaves bouquets next to urns. They have but one thing in common: every last one is beautiful, complex, irreplicable, just like the person for whom it was meant.

\--

“Why do you stay, if it’s such a bother?” she asks him. She knows the real answer, but it’s become a game they play, this back and forth, around and around.

“I’ve always loved a challenge,” he says gravely, betrayed only by the slightest curve of his mouth at the corners.

She watches as he selects flowers carefully, separating them into small bunches and hanging them from branches with twine, and then she walks with him while he waits. At the end of the fourth week, he pulls them down, weaves them together with deft fingers, fashioning a delicate crown. When he places it on her dark hair, the preserved petals remain unchanged. A small victory.

She surveys her reflection in a pool of still water, noting the way the muted colors look bright and beautiful against her dusky skin. “How thoughtful,” she murmurs, marveling at his ingenuity.

He presses a kiss to her temple. “I’ve always loved a challenge.”

\--

He makes a challenge of it, what transient beauty he can create for her.

_Nice_ , they called spring before. _Lovely_. _Beautiful_. _Charming_.

Nowadays, they call it _breathtaking_.

\--

Winter comes, and the whole world holds its breath.

They can’t wait to see what Castiel will come up with next.

 


End file.
